Author Archives: Dan Stanton

Amneal to leverage Indian network to enter biomanufacturing space

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With a robust biosimilars pipeline and an increasingly large footprint, Amneal is preparing to invest in biologics manufacturing capabilities. Amneal Pharmaceuticals has developed and commercialized numerous small molecule drugs and generics but according to the Indian press the firm is on the verge of entering the biomanufacturing space with a greenfield biologics plant in Ahmedabad on the cards. The interest in biologics was confirmed by Amneal spokesman Anthony Di Meo, but he said plans have not been finalized. “In terms…

November 22, 2021

Novo Nordisk to add RNAi engine in $3.3bn Dicerna buy

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The acquisition of development partner Dicerna Pharmaceuticals will accelerate Novo Nordisk’s position in the RNA interference (RNAi) space. In 2019, Novo Nordisk paid $175 million upfront to collaborate with Dicerna in the discovery and development of RNAi therapies for liver-related cardiometabolic diseases using Dicerna’s proprietary GalXC RNAi platform technology. Two years on, and the Danish drugmaker has entered an agreement to buy the partner outright, offering $38.25 per share and valuing the firm at around $3.3 billion. “The acquisition of…

November 18, 2021

CBM: SK investment to fund next growth phase for ambitious CDMO

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The Center for Breakthrough Medicines (CBM) has taken an undisclosed amount from Korean investment firm SK Inc in its latest push to become the world’s largest cell and gene CDMO. In early 2020, life science and real estate investment company MLP Ventures and the Discovery Labs set-up CBM through a 680,000 square-foot facility at a former GSK R&D campus in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. At the time, Brian O’Neill, founder of the Discovery Labs, said through $1.2 billion of funding…

November 17, 2021

Inceptor snaps up Arranta plant in Florida

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Inceptor Bio has acquired a clinical manufacturing plant in Gainesville from Arranta Bio to support trials of its cell therapy pipeline. The 29,000 square-foot facility will be used as a base for Inceptor’s Advanced Manufacturing Platform (AMP), a scalable shared production infrastructure used to produce a pipeline of cell therapy candidates for the firm and its subsidiaries. “We are thrilled to welcome the experienced, talented operating team from Arranta and look forward to establishing cell therapy GMP clinical manufacturing as…

November 17, 2021

eBook: Vaccines Revisited — The Past, Present, and Future of Nucleic-Acid Vaccine Production

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The quarterly BioProcess Insider eBook series launched in 2021 to investigate specific modalities and business strategies driving the biopharmaceutical sector based upon trends and discussion points presented in the Insider’s pages. Two of the four quarterly publications — this one included — have focused on the vaccine industry. If the series had launched in 2019, cell and gene therapies might have warranted a double edition, or perhaps investments in antibodies and antibody fragments would have driven a bispecific focus. Five…

November 16, 2021

Thermo Fisher and 3M team on chromatography tech

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Leveraging Thermo Fisher’s single-use bioreactors systems with 3M’s purification platform aims to improve harvesting and clarification of monoclonal antibodies, the firms say. The collaboration – financials of which have not been divulged – allows Thermo Fisher to serve as an authorized reseller of 3M’s single-stage purification technology Harvest RC Chromatographic Clarifier with its own HyPerforma single-use bioreactor systems up to the 5,000 L scale. 3M’s tech is used to separate recombinant proteins, in particular monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) and according to…

November 15, 2021

UK CAR-T plant could open doors for Autolus to reenter US

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Having ditched a manufacturing plant in Maryland, Autolus Therapeutics has broken ground on a facility in the UK, which – alongside $250 million in investment from Blackstone – aims to support CAR-T candidate obe-cel. The 70,000 square-foot building in Stevenage, UK – close to the UK’s CGT Catapult with whom Autolus has an ongoing collaboration – is being built by construction specialist Merit and is set to support Autolus’s lead candidate obe-cel (obecabtagene autoleucel). The chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell…

November 12, 2021

CPhI 2021: Back to business (almost) for Pharma trade shows

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Milan, Italy is the place to be this week as over 20,000 pharma delegates shake off the past 20 months and attend CPhI Worldwide 2021. BioProcess Insider donned a facemask and presented its ‘Green Pass’ to attend the world’s largest pharma show, CPhI Worldwide in Milan. Naturally numbers were down on 2019’s event in Frankfurt, Germany but with over 1,300 exhibitors and more than 20,000 attendees it is fair to say that the appetite for face-to-face events among the life…

November 10, 2021

Samsung Biologics preps to build fifth Korean plant

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CDMO Samsung Biologics is preparing to construct a fifth biomanufacturing facility after acquiring 10,000 m2 of land in Songdo, Korea. In 2020, Samsung Biologics laid plans for a fourth ‘super plant’ at its site in Songdo, Incheon at a cost of over 2 trillion Korean won—roughly equivalent to $2 billion. Construction of the facility, which will house 256,000 liters of mammalian production capacity, is underway but in the meantime the contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) has made a move…

November 9, 2021

Aragen focuses on securing biologics capacity within ‘competitive’ CDMO space

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Longer-term funding in biotech has led to deeper partnerships with CDMOs says Aragen Bioscience, which is looking to establish its own biomanufacturing capabilities in the US. Through investment from parent firm GVK Bio, contract research organization (CRO) Aragen has grown its business to include two sites in San Francisco offering efficacy studies, protein analytics, and cell line development services. But for several years, the company has looked to enter the contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) space, firstly by adding master…

November 8, 2021